Haunted
by Flashyfirebird
Summary: His gaze is on her, always.


**Warning: **Dark themes/violence

**Haunted**

Yui knows he will be back for real one day.

She sees him as she walks to the bus stop; he is reclining against the bus terminal, all business in suede pants and dress shirt. She is driving the children off to daycare and he is stepping away from her down the street as she loads pink-striped lunchboxes into the car. His blue eyes catch her as she snatches coffee in a little shop downtown with a colleague; she trips, open-heeled pumps catching against incongruities in the asphalt. He does not offer her a hand, and she walks on.

She knows it is not really him – never really is him – but each time, she cannot help but touch the spot on her ear where his earring used to be until infection closed her piercing.

Tetsuya is oblivious. He eats and sleeps and plays with the children – _his_ children. They look enough like him to be purely his – have his wide cheekbones and elegant face and phenomenal visual acuity. (_She_ has tried, once or twice, to mimic their ability to don sunglasses after dark and has ended up planted against a wall). Some days she understands her children; other days she simply picks them up from the care center after work and tries to ignore them as they bounce around the car. On a few of these days she is distracted by Nakago on the street and Tetsuya's son says "Look out," and Yui stops before she hits the car in front of her.

There is a day when she does not have to pick the children up after school. It is some holiday – she has lost track – but she knows Tetsuya is home, which means she does not have to be, and there is always work (she _ought_ to be at work) but Miaka has told her that if Yui goes to work today, Miaka will personally chain her to a wall on her next allotted vacation.

She is not seeing Miaka until the afternoon, and there is a morning with nothing to do – no children, no Tetsuya, and a car at her disposal should she need it. For ten minutes Yui revels in this freedom, and then she feels lost.

So she wanders, as lost people do. There is a park that she likes, a quiet place with a sad pool of water that is sometimes clean and sometimes litter-strewn on which a few fat ducks eke out a pathetic existence off the generosity of the patrons.

She parks in a metered spot and pulls out a sandwich but does not eat it; nor does she throw it to the ducks. They waddle forward as though to intimidate. She is a rising CEO of an investment firm and not to be trifled with. At her glare, they meander off, searching for another victim.

Two girls are playing tag on the lawn and shrieking. Yui wants to cover her ears, but it will make their mother glare – she has had too many layers of social graces heaped on her over the years to do more than narrow her eyes a fraction. The children are unmatched, one stout, the other music-string-thin, and they scream and push each other down and then giggle and wander off to feed the fat ducks.

There are eyes tracking her, and she knows they do not belong to the ducks (their eyes are limpid and brown, where his are blue).

"You are not Nakago," she whispers, not looking up at him but staring into the rippling water. "You never are."

And she feels a breeze across her face – so soft it is almost a caress – and she jumps from her seat and heads over to the screaming-laughing-hair-pulling girls, but she does not tell them to shut up. Instead she walks by them, silent and ghostlike, and they blink at her and go back to feeding the ducks, as though she is not worthy of their notice.

Miaka is vibrantly happy. It is almost nauseating that anyone can be as happy as Miaka. Yui enjoys the visit. How can she not thaw a little when Miaka shoves udon beneath her face and says "Eat this, you're looking thin," and then proceeds to devour the entire bowl herself? Even now, Miaka is gluttonous and vivacious and adorable, and Yui cannot help but feel that time has stood still for Miaka, while the earth kept revolving for the rest of the world. But that cannot be, for Miaka is _thirty_ now, and she has a child, and the boy stares at Yui with eyes that are serious and almost knowing, until Yui has to look away.

"Hikari," Miaka says fondly. "You haven't seen Aunt Yui in awhile."

He rests his hand on hers and she shudders, because somehow he reminds her of a world that is not real more than anyone else on earth, except perhaps Taka, but Taka does not look with her with strange knowing eyes like this boy.

"Well, Hikari," she says, staring at his head which is in line with her eyes now, and because she cannot think of anything else, she murmurs: "You're growing up."

_She_ is growing old, and Hikari reminds her of it. There aren't wrinkles on Yui's skin yet, but the veins stand out in the hand where he touches her, and there are more moles on the back of her wrists than there used to be. It is all right to be old, when she is not constantly reminded of what it was to be young, but Hikari is still holding her hand. Hikari shrugs and drops it, and the sense of strangeness dissipates. Yui leaves anyway, without staying for dinner.

There are eyes, watching her from the alleyway as she steps on the gas. For a second she thinks they are blue, but they aren't. "Stop following me," she says, and she shakes herself, because this is a silly way to feel, and because she is being a little girl again. "I'm imagining you," she says, and grimaces.

Instead of going straight home, she drives in a direction that will take her to the water. She grabs dinner at a small shop on the way, eats it outdoors beneath a small umbrella that does nothing to shield the setting sun from her eyes. Then she drives.

She drives down side streets and up back alleys, and the sunlight has almost faded from the sky; she parks near the wharf and walks toward the harbor. She can see farther here: boats block the view of the water, but the gulls circle round and there is space. It is different from Kutou, where there was no space, where it all was enclosed by trees or by city and palace walls. Something crunches beneath her foot, and she raises it and looks down. Mother-of-pearl gleams in the dirt, but it is only the underside of an old mussel-shell – it is not real. She steps on it again and walks on.

She hears the man from far away – the one who would kill her or mug her or rape her or some combination of the three. He is faceless – or perhaps he has a face but she does not think to look – has a knife (this she sees, but it does not perturb her).

She does not turn, because she knows this would happen, and she knows that this is the final test, because if there is truly a Nakago, he will save her now, like he did the first time in Kutou – come riding up like the villain or the antihero or the hero – he does not fit into any of these categories in her head so she stops trying to think about it and simply waits.

She feels the knife being pressed against her throat, hears herself being told to cooperate, or else. Or else what, Nakago? Or else he will kill me, murder me, destroy me, rape me, beat me to the ground and trample me like I'm an animal? Rescue me, Nakago, I'm tired of this.

She hears the cruel voice telling her what to do, and he has a knife pressed against her throat so mechanically, she obeys, pulling off her polyester business shirt and tossing it away. Other clothes follow. She does not sense Nakago anywhere, but he should be near now, she thinks. Perhaps he has discovered her car; perhaps he is even now walking towards the harbor to find her. She tosses her clothes into high tide and watches the ocean carry them off. A distant part of her imagines the drive home – naked and alone – but she knows that will not happen.

There is still a knife against her throat, and then there is an alley wall to her back and detached disgust. Surely he should be here by now? She tries to remember when he appeared, and can't. All is crying and screaming and pain, but the memories are fragmented and broken, like she is.

She does not cry now; it seems a silly and useless activity to pretend she has emotions when she really doesn't. She does not scream; there is no purpose, for he should have come by now and she sees only a dark street and an empty harbor beyond it. She does not feel, even as she is pressed against the wall and made to submit; all her feeling for this moment happened at fifteen, and now she is empty.

The faceless man tells her that now he must kill her, and she is already dead so when he stabs her through the stomach she is surprised that she feels pain. She stares at the blood on her palms, on her naked stomach, as though it belongs to someone else and not her. The knife is withdrawn and her nightmare shuffles away, and she is really dead now, and she knows it.

She stands up and stumbles and walks toward the light, and this time, he is watching her, and she knows that. She spreads her arms wide, despite the pain, lifts her blood-streaked hands up towards the stars.

"You are not here, Nakago," she laughs. "You never were."

She coughs. Her voice falters; the wind whips it away. For a second, there is something like a whisper – shimmering blue in the dusky twilight. Her ear throbs, but she does not touch it. The stars grow brighter, and her legs cannot support her anymore, and she is falling, arcing toward the ocean in a last graceful flight.

For an instant, she sees it one last time – scrawled across the constellation with a spiraling tail – lacerated into the sky in blue aurora flame. It is so faint that it must be imagined, just like the Shijintenchisho is only imagined – so impossible that she cannot help but gasp and stumble forward, almost crying from the ache of it. It is spirit – heart – _kokoro_ – everything he stole from her – all that given back – an impossible salvation that fills her, permeates her, spills across her like seawater – as unstoppable as the blood seeping out of her broken body to mix with the tides.

* * *

**A/N: **What the bloody hell was that, you ask? I have no freaking clue! I truly never intended for this to become so violent when I started writing it – it just evolved into… um. This thing. Why does everything I write become depressing? T_T I'm really not that emo, I swear! I actually laugh a lot, and enjoy humor. Oh, stop giving me that skeptical look.

I'm actually still trying to figure out what this story is about. My fiction professor once told me that stories are really supposed to pose questions, not actively try to answer them, so I guess I shouldn't let this bother me too much.

Drop me a line if you read this, even if it's simply a "What were you smoking?" or "That's the wackiest thing I've ever read on this site including Harry/Voldemort slashfics." I love getting feedback!

**Disclaimer:** Fushigi Yuugi belongs to Yuu Watase and is not, therefore, mine. Nor are her characters.


End file.
